Rehearsal Notes

 
I work at an independent regional radio station and, while our signal covers seventeen counties, the focus is clearly local.  We do our best to cover local events of interest and one of the most interesting is the annual lighting of the county courthouse.

Each year, money is raised to pay for the decorating of the hundred and fifty year-old building the the city-block sized green space it sits in the middle of.  Then, on the evening of Black Friday, the community is invited to come down and await the arrival of Santa Claus whose job it is to illuminate the finished product.

While waiting, the growing crowd is entertained by local performers and a brass quintet who perform popular songs of the season.  There's even a choir from a local school and a community sing-along.

The ceremony has been a fixture on the community calendar for seventy-two years.  It's a multi-generational that both encourages looks backward and forward.  For every conversation that begins, "Remember the year that...," there's a "I can't wait until I can...."

But that's what this time of year is for:  looking back, and looking ahead.

I can't help but think of the snow that used to be such a common part of Christmas that I just took it for granted; the toys and the family gatherings; turkey and plumb pudding; old stories and even older jokes; the plastic bugs in the mashed potatoes and my kilt-wearing uncle who never wanted their to be any mystery about what lies beneath.

Looking forward is like waiting for snow:  anticipation can be exciting, but when it shows up, you have to deal with it.

For so many years, Christmas celbrations were the same but, once I left home, every Christmas has been different, an attempt to start new traditions, create new associations, and that only embroiders the ghosts of Christmas past.

My wife attended several Christmases with my extended family and has tried valiantly to capture some of the flavor.  She particularly latched on to the tradition of the Christmas Crackers with their paper crowns, small toys and very bad jokes.  She got a box and brought them to her parents' home for a Christmas  dinner.  She imagined I would be more comfortable with this familiar accent.  And, to their credit, her family all played along, but it was unfamiliar to them.  They were uncomfortable, out of their element, which made me uncomfortble and so there we all were sitting around the table in stupid paper hats reading jokes that weren't all that funny.  It made me miss the old Christmases even  more.

Our traditions are not just a repetition of activities, the cookies and milk for Santa, the reading of certain stories, the preparation of certain foods;  the setting matters.  Once divorced from context, they loose their power; like Dracula disolving in the morning sun.

Perhaps that's why we hold on.

The connection to the past, even if it isn't our own, can be powerfully rooting--all the more important in this ever-more rootless world.

Some years ago, I stumbled across a local television broadcast of the holiday recital of a dance studio.  It was a showcase for the different classes and each dutifully trouped onto the too-small tv studio floor, waited for the playback to begin and then did their best to execute the choreography they had been drilling for weeks. 

And, in between "numbers" the camera would cut to a "Christmas set" which consisted of a fireplace and a comfortable chair where Santa sat by while the host and owner of the dance studio, introduced the next number and, most often, each and every student in that class.  In the background, you could hear the previous group shuffling off and the next one coming on.  There were a lot of tap number and so every footfall could easily be heard.

As might be expected, herding the students was not always fluid and so it often fell to the host and Santa to "fill" until everyone was ready.  It quickly became clear that they did not have a lot of material beyond the names of the participating students and so Santa would throw in a random "Ho-ho-ho," and the teacher would talk about random students, that year's trip to New York and anything else that would come to mind while constantly looking off-camera to see if the next performers were yet ready.

There was something comic about the whole low-tech production:  from the false starts of the music to the lost looks in the eyes of the students and their inevitable mistakes.  But the show was not for me, indeed not really for the general public at all.  It was a show for parents, something to record on the VCR and share with relatives and then, when their child grew up, to embarrass them with.

I remember looking for the show every year as it, for me, marked the beginning of the holiday season.  It was one of my new traditions.

For whatever reason, the studio has stopped presenting their "concerts" on the local TV station which has only made my memory of them richer.

This brings me back to the illuminated courthouse and seventy-two years of community sing-along and waiting for Santa.

The lighting ceremony, like the televised dance recital, is decidedly low-tech.  Some of the singers have trained voices and others do not.  It seems pretty clear that none have rehearsed with the band as there is frequently an expression of surprise at the notes each side is trying to reach.  The television camera never blinks, or cuts away and so we see the transitions between acts.  Singers walking off while the next act shuffles on and sets up.  A hurried conversation with the leader of the brass band and then the master of ceremonies makes his introduction.  The band is mostly made up of young musicians and their lack of experience is clearly audible.  But, like a rattle-trap car, it does eventually come together and we're off on a version of "Silver Bells," of "Jingle Bells," or some other bell-related holiday favorite.

And the audience is singing along.

Periodically, the audience is provided with updates on Santa's proximity to the Square.

Eventually, the word is given and the performers launch into "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" which is meant to underscore his arrival.  And then, after a chorus, or two, Santa appears coming around the corner on the Fire Department's ladder truck.  It's a big truck and there are people all around the Square, so its progress to the courthouse is cautious and lengthy.  

All the while, the crowd is being encouraged to keep singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

And then the truck turns not toward the courthouse, but to make a complete circut of the square, before eventually depositing Santa in the street in front of the stage.

Only Santa Claus Lane is choked with parents and children and he has to navigate through them like a celebrity avoiding paparazzi.

Still singing.

Eventually, Santa hits the stage and, like an elf with millions of presents to deliver, he gets right to business.  He gets the crowd to say the magic words, which are, of course "not loud enough" and have to be repeated.  And, after the third time, the lights are turned on and the show is over.

That's it.  Hard stop.

Everybody packs up, Santa is on to the next courthouse, or mall appearance, and the crowd, having got what they came for, dissipates.

It's almost like they've come for a shot, a dose of medication--or maybe a booster is more accurate:  a reinforcement of Christmas cheer to get them through December and off to a good start for the year to come.

This ceremony is something the community looks forward to each year and contributes their money to help pay for.  It's the start of the holiday season, it's the committee you want to volunteer for.  It's a constant in good times and bad, pandemic, or no pandemic.  

That's not quite true, there was no ceremony this year, but there was a courthouse lighting.  In order to avoid possible infection, a previous year's ceremony was streamed over the internet, after which the public was invited to come down to the Square and see the lights.  Even this hybrid celebration was considered a success.

Not really much of a surprise because, after seventy-two years, it's clear that the community needs this tradition in a way they don't need much else.  After three generations, this tradition is baked into the community's DNA.  Childhood experience becomes memory, becomes story, becomes legend, becomes childhood experience for the next generation:  unchangeable and everlasting.

It is Christmas.

Real life changes from year to year, but this time of year, the short days and long nights, irrespective of your particular beliefs, seems to lend itself to reflection, memory and possibility.  By the time Christmas shows up, like Santa at the Square, you're ready for a little magic.  The days start to get longer again and the nights shorter.  Time starts again.  Possibilities seem possible.

It's really not important to hit all the notes, or remember all the steps, or all the words.  We actively look for a reason to be hopeful around this time of year.  I'm not sure if it's nature, or nurture.  I'm not even certain it's a reflection of faith given the multitude of festivals that happen in December, but I am certain that a measure of optimism--a disease to which I am essentially immune--breaks through  as we near the turning of each year.  

You would think that we repetition and inevitable disappointments, this ephemeral optimism would dilute over time, but, every year, we feel the pull of our traditions, our aspirations, and our dreams.  We pull on our cold weather gear, strap on our dancing shoes, and honor our traditions, if only in the breach.

And, I guess, if there is even a possibility that hope will be rewarded in the year ahead, then maybe that's enough.

A Hazy Shade of Winter

We had our first dusting of snow yesterday.

  

Most of it's gone now.  All that's left is a light sugar-frosting on the still strangely-green grass.  We're in the second-third of December and there is still green grass.  It doesn't seem to line up with the proliferation of Currier and Ives imagery that comes with the last page of the calendar.

It's hard for me to tell whether it's the age in which we live, or just the age I have reached, that makes me acutely aware of dissonance and disconnection.

I am hard-coded to love winter because, to me, it means mountains of snow, piles of blankets and the risks and rewards of a roaring fire.

The house I grew up in was a duplex with a common foyer and a staircase that swept up to the upper flat.  One of the ways we marked the changing of the seasons was the return of the boot tray and the pairs of wildly different winter boots that would wait for their owners there like cars outside a funeral home:  all lined-up and ready to go.  

It always seemed to me that the bigger you were the less of a boot you had to wear.  We kids had what used to be called over-shoes.  These were thick rubber boots that, surprisingly enough, went over your shoes.  They had what I would describe as a white woolen washer that looked like cauliflower that encircled the inside top of the boot to protect against snow getting inside and they were fastened with an adjustable strap and buckle arrangement.  They were very practical, but I always hated wearing them.  My dad and the grown-ups he ran with wore toe-rubbers: a kind of condom for the soles of their dress shoes.  The only time I saw my dad wear proper winter boots was when there was a big storm, or when he was headed out into the country.

I hated the overshoes because of the effort it took to put them on.  The boots were always the last thing to put on and once you had all the layers of clothing and sweater and coat and scarf on, the simple act of folding yourself in half to tug on the boots was daunting.  There was a whole protocol to dressing for winter both because, at that time, winter was an actual season and because nobody wanted their kid to catch a cold.

As we kids got older and harder to manage, the outerwear protocol got redacted and contracted. 

First to go was the use of that buckle and strap on the overshoes.  It was a minor act of civil disobedience, but it was a protest nonetheless and one that spread among the elementary school crowd I ran with.  In those days, it was not a crime to let your children walk to school and so you would see companies of kids coming from all directions with tiny nickle-plated buckles swinging from the rubber straps on their overshoes, each of them fighting the power.

After the boots came the coats.  

There's a line in "Ya Got Trouble" from Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man":  "The moment  your son leaves the house, does he re-buckle his knickerbockers below the knee?"  After being stuffed and crammed into our winter coats, throttled with scarves and blinded with scratchy woolen hats, once we were out the door, we un-buttoned, un-zipped and un-stuffed as best we could.  Safely out of sight, I would snatch the hat from my head and bury it in my pocket.  I have a larger than average-size head and sheathing it in a toque with a pom-pom on top was tantamount to wearing a clown nose and a "Kick Me" sign.

My nascent vanity may have caused me to rupture just about every blood vessel in my giant ears, but nobody was going to tell me what do to, especially if they didn't know I wasn't doing it.

At some point while I was in school, winter boots fell completely out of fashion and kids started wearing running shoes.  

This is where I mark the beginning of the end of winter and the start of global warming.  

When I started school, you had gym shoes.  These were shoes you kept at school and were to be worn only for gym class because the gym teacher was obsessive about his floors in a way that made him hard to take seriously. 

Most of us had canvas high-tops and they were considered a school supply and not a fashion essential.  At some point--I think it was in the early Seventies--Adidas broke through as the first brand that kids recognized and had to have.

In retrospect, you can see the now-classic wave of trend ebb  and flow.  First, only the "rich kids" had Adidas and they were a remarkable sight as in "Look, are those Adidas Richie Rich wearing?  Of course they are."  And then, "These Northstars kind of look like Adidas."  Followed by "Can you believe it?  Poor Paulie is wearing hand-me-down Adidas."

It didn't take long for the overshoes to be replaced by running shoes in the school cloak room and on the boot tray outside our front door.

When I was a kid, winter was a months-long event that you had to dress up for--like going the theatre, or getting married.  There was a definite hunkering down, a drawing closer for warmth and company because going outside was an ordeal full of harsh conditions and uncomfortable clothing.

As time has passed, as I have continued to ripen and leave my best-before-date to recede in the rear view mirror, there is less of everything.  The coats are lighter, the boots are thinner and rarely out of the closet.  There is less to winter itself and the renewal that is marked by the winter solstice and the many celebrations that are anchored to it.  For most, the holidays begin and end with sales:  they start with deep discounts on toys and end with deep discounts on holiday decorations.  It's all one big transaction:  we'll help you buy gifts for your loved ones if, when it's over, you help us by taking these decorations off our hands.

As a culture we have a fondness for stories about the traditions of the holiday season.  They connect us to an idea about family and home that, as adults, we work so hard to free ourselves from.  

This is the essential transaction of life:  we are insulated against a harsh environment by layers of protection, resist, resent, and reject that protection only to discover that colds are common because everybody gets them and they are not nearly as much fun when you have to take care of yourself.

I have an extended family:  "extended" in the same way that a rope bridge is extended across a crevasse, a canyon, or a pair of cliffs.  We are attached, but the bonds seem tenuous and the space between us vast.  There were many years--too many years--when crossing that bridge, relying on those bonds, seemed foolish, even dangerous.  Like the layers of winter coats I was so anxious to be freed from, I did what I could to release myself from those bonds, but as another year comes to an end and winter threatens, I now see a new value in sensible seasonal apparel and the worth of a good pair of overshoes.

Inuksuit

The bubble-wrapped package showed up in my mailbox about the middle of last month. It wasn't the fun-size bubble-wrap that we all think we are too mature to pop, but the small-cell kind; the kind they make into envelopes by backing it with heavy paper so they look like ravioli. This particular pillow-shaped ravioli was over-stuffed so as to remind me of those fringed souvenir pillows from places like Niagara Falls or Las Vegas. If Staples sold souvenir pillows, I imagine they would look just like this package.

It was not until I saw the return address that I recognized what it was: a pair of cassette tapes that I had bought on eBay.

This was very exciting.

Since I discovered the online auction site, I have regularly returned to search for a variety of signs and totems of my past.

It happens all the time: I have something that dredges up some association to the past and I wonder it it's out there. Whenever I would wonder whatever became of the such-and-such toy, or the so-and-so book that I used to have, I would look on eBay to see if was out there.

A family photo taken at Man and his World makes me think about the Ca-na-da song that Bobby Gimby recorded and then I go looking to see if that once-ubiquitous anthem of our national centennial might still be available.

It's kind of like asking permission to have a history. Are your memories worthy of being offered for sale by someone else?

And this is the genius of eBay: making nostalgia into a scavenger hunt. It's the gaming of memory.

Do I have the correct spelling? How would the seller present the item? What key words would they use? Would they spell those correctly?

What is the right combination of breadcrumbs to lure the memory into view.

eBay understands the power of human beings to make bad decisions in an auction situation while drunk on nostalgia. Baby boomers buying back their childhoods are an important part of the business model.

I remember being so impressed with my Secret Sam spy briefcase with its hidden camera, periscope, dart-like scroll for sending secret messages and collapsible sniper rifle; those were simpler times. It was a toy, but it was also something that grown-ups had. James Bond had a secret briefcase; my dad had a briefcase: therefore my dad was Ja--. (That can't be right.)

I got the toy and I played with all of its parts. I remember taking pictures with the spy camera at Man and his World. And, of course, I broke the toy, lost parts and generally—eventually—outgrew the toy.

And then, as I evolved into another ravioli-shaped middle-aged guy, I wondered whatever became of that toy and, naturally, whether they might have one on eBay.

And they did.

So I bid on it.

And as I was bidding and re-bidding on this objectively depraved plaything, I became increasingly irrational. I was convinced that I could once again play with it as I did when I had it the first time.

My adult brain must have known that was impossible, but my memory-addled brain went straight back to the days when I would run through the neighbor's backyards with my sniper rifle, sneaking up on my friends, pretend-shooting them and then arguing whether I had hit them or not. Trying to do that now would get me shot and the bullets would most definitely not be plastic.

The hunting of the totem and, indeed, of the memory itself is the thing. The remembering and the searching and the bidding and the waiting are each more intoxicating than the step before. The debauchery does not end until when, in the cold light of day, the package comes.

When my new-old toy came in the mail, the briefcase with the secret camera and the collapsible sniper rifle, my excitement was immediately cured, my nostalgia lifted. I was struck by how small the briefcase was.

It was like it was made for a child.

It sounds silly to even try and describe, but, in that moment of unwrapping, when memory crashed headlong into reality.... It was like staring down at a long-ago pencil mark on a kitchen wall that recorded how much you had grown. At the moment the memory was recorded it was an achievement, but, now, it just reminds you how much time has passed through my hands.

That is the danger of being reunited with your past. It's what people talk about when they talk about being unable to go home. Past is passed and here is now and never the two should meet.

The power of memory is not in its accuracy, but in its power to evoke. Like the auction of some long-forgotten toy, the hunt is intoxicating because of the many associations that are anchored to the totem.

The secret of the Secret Sam is in its power to make me think about Joe and Peter and Toby and Micheal and our games of Cops and Robbers. I think about them and the others that I could invite to my birthday parties and I compare that to the few friends I have now and how they are so far away....

“Time, time, time, see what's become of me....”

The cassette tapes in my office supply store souvenir pillow contained a version of a radio show which was, itself, an imperfect artifact of a holiday tradition of my childhood.

Like the sniper rifle in the scaled-down briefcase, this recording was a scaled-down version of a holiday broadcast that Montrealers of a certain age looked forward to every Christmas. As broadcast, the program might run up to four hours, as packaged, it is just under ninety minutes. Unlike the live broadcast, it is the result of sober decisions regarding the length of recording tape and the costs of manufacturing and not pure sentiment for the season.

Somewhat sobered by my earlier eBay hunts, I knew what I was getting when I bid on this set. I had looked for a long time for an as-aired recording of one of these shows. For a time, they used to air one annually on a Canada-based short-wave station, but I always seemed to be one software update away from capturing it. Occasionally, I would see vinyl copies of the commercial release come up for auction, but I had neither the asking price, nor a record player.

The memory of listening to the broadcast, coupled with its restricted access made it, over time, the white whale of holiday sentiment. You want it because you want it and you want it more because you can't have it. And, because the value is so personal that it is hard to explain, to justify, then, with no small measure of defensiveness, desire ticks up even higher.

But now, the hunt was over.

After all the bubble wrap was removed, I had in my hands a copy of Paul Reid's Christmas.

Very exciting.

I recognize that, with very limited exceptions, almost nobody is going to appreciate how I felt to be finally in possession of these tapes.

PaulReid had a nighttime show on English-language radio station CJAD in Montreal through most of the Sixties and Seventies. This was still during the time when radio shows had local hosts and the hosts were allowed to have personalities. Their shows were personal to them and not to some sort of algorithm worked out by the programming department.

Each weeknight, when not preempted by sports or world events, Reid interviewed visiting celebrities and played what is now disparagingly called “easy listening” music. He read poetry and he told stories.

It sounds old-fashioned to describe and, in truth, it was a bit of a throw-back even then, but Paul Reid's warm baritone was just the warm milk his listeners needed to help them put the day to bed and even consider the possibility of sleep.

No amount of twisting on the volume control could entirely drown out the times in which we were living, but, after the news and their relentless reports of land wars in Asia and the Middle East, language war in Quebec and any number of constitutional crises—foreign and domestic—a little Andre Kostelanetz helped to take some of the edge off.

The highlight of the year was when he did his Christmas show. It was his annual tribute to his parents and fifteen brothers and sisters. In his fond remembrances of growing up during the Depression and the holiday traditions of those days, his listeners somehow each found their own way back the families, the fireplaces and the traditions of their own memory.

It has taken me years to appreciate that it was through his honesty and the fondness of his recollection that his listeners found connections to and association with his story.

Reid was unapologetically a Catholic, but, for him, Christmas was as much about sharing an openness with people as it was about faith. To him, saying “Merry Christmas” was another way of saying “I love you.”

I can't claim to have heard the show each year without fail, but I do remember thinking it was important that it was on. I can remember more than once tuning in and catching the tail-end of the program and feeling disappointed that I had missed it—usually for reasons I would regret in comparison.

In Canada, we do not have the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Christmas to focus our thinking on the holidays. At least in Montreal, coming as it did, in early December, Paul Reid's show served to re-set your seasonal compass. It did more to put listeners in a place of gratitude and thanks-giving than any amount of holiday specials on TV or store-wide sales.

It's been a generation since since Paul Reid was last on the air and yet the recollection of this program has stayed with me, locked away in that small closet of moments and experience that remind me that I am still alive, still human.

In the same way that there are particular holiday ornaments, or a recording of “The Little Drummer Boy, or a particular film version of “A Christmas Carol” that may be a part of your personal journey through the holidays, this is part of mine.

We are fortunate, I suppose, to live in an age where gateways to sentiment are readily available, just a download away, but, like holiday tinsel wrapped around the beater bar of your vacuum cleaner, stripped of context, they can look pretty cheesy.

Like giving a toy sniper rifle to a six-year-old, there is much about this time of year that does not stand careful scrutiny. When compared to ever-shortening periods of daylight, falling temperatures and the snow and ice that make even simple journeys treacherous, decorating for the holidays may seem like that string quartet that played while the Titanic sank, but it is precisely for these reasons that it is important for each of us to find our way back to whatever “home” might mean for us.

I, regrettably, have one of those minds that can more easily remember every mistake I have ever made, every sleight I have felt, every criticism I have ever received, than I can any of their opposites. Sure, I was disappointed to see that the briefcase was smaller than I remembered it would be, but what was harder for me to appreciate was the fact that I got the toy in the first place. And the thoughts behind all that generosity are equally hard for me to connect with.

But it was there.

I was fortunate to grow up two parents, a brother and a sister. My parents did the best they could to take care of us, keep us safe, and honor those things that we felt were important to us and for us. It can take a long time to recognize the truth of any experience and far too often it is not until your time is all but gone that realization is even possible and appreciation within reach.

I was brought up with few religious traditions. We were affiliated with the Anglican Church and so I have strong associations between the “hap-hap-happiest time of the year” and the legato tempos of dirge and laments. (I suppose that is why I can connect Christmas and sniper rifles.) This is part of what makes it all the more important to hang on to whatever totems and inuksuit I can find to help point me to a sentiment and a perspective that I can work with.

“Inuksuit”?

You heard me.

Inuksuit are man-made stone landmarks found across northern North America. Among other things, they are used for navigation, to mark places of veneration. In a place free of natural landmarks, they help a traveler find their way and sustain them in their journey.

Landmarks are few and far between both on the barren tundra and in our very-cluttered real life. You gather what you can find—rocks, toys, books, music—pile it high and then strike off in what you hope is the right direction. You going as far as you can, out of sight of land, of the familiar, but never so far as to lose sight of that last marker. When you think you can't see it is when you stop and look for a new stone, or go online and look for an old memory....

These tapes still evoke the same feelings, but it is less because of what they are and more because of what they represent: a simpler time in my life, a time when I had fewer responsibilities and more opportunities, more answers and fewer questions.

That is, I suppose, the greatest gift we, as humans, can give ourselves, these tokens, these personal markers that lead us back to our past.

Our path through life is not linear, but, like the very structure of ourselves, helical and multi-stranded. We journey forward, we circle back, we make new connections and we reinforce those connections already made and it is all made possible by a set of markers, the guideposts of memory that we pull together and pile up so that they may be seen more clearly.

With each lap, we are moving forward and yet we are also climbing up the helix. The more distant the memory, the larger we have to make its marker so that it might remain in view. This is perhaps what makes the toys of childhood seem larger than they really were, the times simpler, the emotions purer and the food taste richer.

It is only fitting that we have special days in our year set aside for reminiscence and sentiment that are close to the end of the year. Daylight is scarce, nights are long and the weather forces us to turn inward. It is at times like this that our pasts are, like the images in the passengers side mirror, closer than they appear.

The winter holidays are the time to unpack your inuksuk and examine each stone. Learn from them, rebuild them and then, with the days getting longer once again, set of on the next lap of our journey.

Christmas Windows

It has started to snow.

It isn't much and it still isn't the right time for it to stick around, but it's snow and a step in the right direction.

It's dark too. Not pitch black night time dark, but the fuzzy dark that happens as the sun makes its final exit and the day comes to an end.

And it's cold. Not really cold temperature-wise, but damp cold: the kind that gets into your joints that you don't really understand until you get older.

Ronin and I are out walking.

This is our time.

I try to mix up the routes we take just to keep it interesting. I think I am doing it for him, but the truth is he doesn't care. We could walk the same path every day and he would be fine with that. He makes new discoveries every day and everywhere. All that matters is that I honor the commitment and take him out.

As it gets darker outside, we become more aware of the lights on in each of the houses we pass. We are not voyeurs, but, on these dimly-lit streets, the lights from the houses just naturally draw your attention.

It's hard not to notice as the occupants move from room to room and turn on lights. It's hard not to notice who's having dinner and who's watching TV. And, at this time of year, it's hard not to notice who have already put up their holiday lights.

As the blue-gray of dusk becomes the charcoal gray of twilight becomes the black of night, we cross streets and round corners. At every pole, sign or hydrant, Ronin stops to read and/or sign the guest book while I search my pockets for anything I can find with which to wipe my running nose.

We pass more houses and more of them have a tree, or a wreath, or one of those inflatable lawn sculptures. Each reminds me that I need to find our decorations and get started on our house. Each is like the open door on an Advent calendar reminding us that Christmas is coming ever closer.

Each window is also a reminder of every Christmas past: the trips to the Atwater Market to pick out the tree, untangling the gordian knot of lights and promising myself that I would take more care putting this year's lights away so as not to have the same problem next year, sitting in the living room late at night bathed in the warmth of the decorated tree and Mahalia Jackson's version of “Silent Night” on the hi-fi. Each is a reminder of gifts given and received and the growing list of family and friends who have “gone on ahead.”

As Ronin and I walk on through the darkening evening, I become aware that I am looking at these decorated houses through the soft-focused lens of memory. It doesn't snow much around here, but at each house I see with a yard tree, I am imagining it poking up through a snowbank, its limbs staggering under a thick frosting of snow. As our six feet move silently along the pavement, I am hearing the sound of them crunch in snow—the same sound you hear when you chew a mouthful of cereal.

There is a real danger of being kidnapped by memories of Christmas Past: it robs you of your Christmas present and the ability to appreciate the here and the now. Just as Hollywood stars of a certain age look better in soft focus, too much time spent looking in the rear view mirror can give you a false sense of how things really were. I know that and yet the nostalgic warmth that emanates from these houses seems really tangible to me tonight.

We walk past a house with a screened in porch and right at the corner there are a pair of figures from a large molded Nativity scene, but instead of being arranged in the traditional semi-circle around the manger, the figures of Mary and Joseph are right up against the screen looking out toward the street. In this context, without the figures of the Wise Men and the Baby Jesus, the figures look like the expectant children who used to crowd around the Morgan's Department Store window watching the animated holiday window display. They literally have their noses pressed up against the screen in anticipation.

I am struck by this image because it seems to capture my own arrested perspective on Christmas.

Without a doubt, this was my most favorite time of the year and now....

I guess I tend to approach each Christmas with the same ambivalence that I have for my own birthday. There is a hope that is mixed with disappointment; there is fear and anger, there is depression. (I'm not sure that I am not confusing Christmas with New Year's.)

Christmas is a benchmark, a milestone and a goal. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,” “I'll Be Home for Christmas”: the notion of comparison and contrast is built right in. “Look what Santa brung me!” “You have to put up the lights, everyone else has theirs up already.”

I suffer by comparison.

I had goals and expectations and each year they seem to be further away, like Santa's sleigh at the end of his hard day's night.

I walk past these windows and see glimpses of the Christmas of my past and I can still feel the scratchiness of the new clothes, smell the aromas of the holiday baking and hear the frantic competition of oneupsmanship in the telling of the horribly corny riddles from the Christmas crackers. It calls to me like the memory of the ocean's roar trapped in a sea shell.

Ronin and I pass more windows with different degrees of lights and decoration. Many of the major movements in art history are represented in the houses we pass: realism, impressionism, expressionism each are expressed in light and texture, line and color. There are even some nihilists who don't bother decorating.

I write about Christmas because it has the same sort of all and nothing meaning represented by our neighborhood's decorators. It informs where I am by reminding me where I came from and also that another lap around life's racecourse is coming to an end. It's a time to be warmed by the familiarity of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” mourn losses, and be reminded of victories.

That is Christmas's present to us all.

It's getting darker and I have forgotten to bring my gloves.

We turn the last corner and enter the final stretch of our walk.

Ronin stops, stiffens and, from somewhere deep in his massive chest, a growl begins to form.

He's staring at something but, try as I might, I can't make it out. There's only one street light on this part of the walk and everything beyond its beams is out of focus to my stigmatic eyes.

I hear them before I see them, a trio of deer wander lazily into the light from between a pair of houses.

Ronin barks.

They stop, turn in our direction and then, in a twinkling, they are gone in a flash. They clear the split rail fence that encloses the golf course on our left as it it didn't even occur to them.

The dog stares after them as they disappear into the darkness.

I tighten the lead and pick up the pace. Time to go home and get warm.